November 02, 2010

Quinn predicts victory in governor race

Posted by Monique Garcia, Rick Pearson, David Heinzmann, Kristen Mack and David Kidwell at 6:30 p.m.; updated at 1:02 a.m.

Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn predicted victory early Wednesday as he clung to a narrow lead in the contest for governor, but Republican challenger Bill Brady refused to concede until all ballots were counted.

“The people have won and I believe we have won,” Quinn told supporters shortly before 1 a.m. at a downtown hotel. “We know there are more votes to be counted, but we are…ahead.”

Quinn had a lead of more than 9,100 votes out of more than 3.3 million ballots cast with 98 percent of precincts counted, unofficial totals showed. Quinn and Brady each had 46 percent with a trio of third-party candidates at a combined 8 percent.

Ballots in more than 200 precincts across the state had not been counted, more than half from Chicago and suburban Cook County that likely would lean toward Quinn. But Brady’s camp cautioned that “thousands” of other forms of votes — such as absentee and military ballots — had yet to be counted.

“Some of you may have realized by now, I have a penchant for close elections. It seems to be something that always ends up on the right side,” Brady told a crowd at his campaign headquarters in his hometown of Bloomington.

Brady won a crowded race for the Republican governor nomination in February by 193 votes out of 750,000 ballots cast. In Brady’s first race for the state House in 1992, he upset a veteran Republican lawmaker by eight votes in the primary.

Brien Sheahan, general counsel to the Illinois Republican Party, said that a potential 30,000 absentee votes are uncounted statewide. Those include more than 4,400 in Chicago, presumed to favor Democrats, and about 9,500 in the collar counties, he said.

Election officials on Wednesday will begin cross-checking absentee ballots against ballots cast on Tuesday to prevent people from voting twice. Chicago and Cook County election officials said they don’t expect to count absentee ballots until Thursday at the soonest.

All votes should be counted and counted fairly, Quinn said.

"I think when all is said we'll end up on top with the most votes," Quinn said.

The governor's comments came after Brady said the election was too close to call and would not be decided tonight.

"We're going to make sure that every vote in the state is counted. We're going to make sure that happens. We're going to make sure that this process is done right," said Brady, who told supporters at a Bloomington hotel ballroom to go home.

Brady aides said a recount was not under discussion.

Quinn's supporters booed in Chicago as Brady dismissed his own supporters and suggested they go home. Quinn has not come out yet.

A Quinn victory would be the most significant of his three-decade-long political career as a populist activist-turned-politician. He’s been state treasurer and lieutenant governor, but became the “accidental governor” 22 months ago after the disgraced Blagojevich was impeached and removed from office.

The governor also was trying to keep Democrats in control of an office won in 2002 following the scandal-tarred tenure of Republican Gov. George Ryan. He was later convicted on federal corruption charges, sending the state GOP into a downward spiral.

But it was the arrest of Blagojevich nearly two years ago that gave Brady and Republicans hopes of seizing it back in Tuesday’s election. The GOP also sought to blame the state’s severe economic problems on the Democratic one-party rule of Springfield.

Regardless of the outcome, the winner faces a troubled Illinois government, its finances among the worst in the nation.

“We have to look beyond tonight,” said state Rep. Greg Harris, D-Chicago, who attended Quinn’s election night reception. “We have a lot of heavy lifting to do. We should not be thinking there will be an easy or painless fix to the state's budget issues. It's going to be tough.”

Lawmakers are scheduled to return to Springfield for the lame-duck session on Thursday and hope to know who they’ll be dealing with in the governor’s mansion by then.

Quinn piled up a 4-to-1 margin in Chicago, where turnout was estimated at around 52 percent. Quinn needed a city turnout of more than 50 percent, and he got it.

But Brady was keeping the contest close based on strong support in the Republican-leaning collar counties, along with support from his downstate base. Brady also kept Quinn’s margin down in suburban Cook County, which long has been turning Democratic.

Quinn is at his favored spot of the Hotel Allegro in the Loop and Brady has arrived with his family at a hotel in his hometown of downstate Bloomington.

Quinn's campaign said they expect it to be a long night.

"Right now the campaign is optimistic, we're still waiting for a lot of votes to come in," said Mica Matsoff, Quinn's spokeswoman. "We are hitting all our targets in the city and collar counties."

Brady campaign officials say they were heartened by the numbers coming out of the Chicago area. While Quinn was leading by a wide margin, they believe his lead isn't big enough to hold on as result from downstate come in later in the evening.

"We're doing a little better in Chicago than we expected but not quite as well in (suburban) Cook County. They offset each other," said Ron Gidwitz, chairman of Brady's campaign.

Voters today got their chance to weigh in after 10 months of attacks and counter-attacks that played out in near-daily news conferences and in TV attack ads.

The governor's race spawned more than $10.5 million in Chicago TV ads, the lion’s share negative. Brady received $4.7 million from the Republican Governors Association to help with ad buys and the group is spending another $1 million for ads on his behalf. Quinn spent $4.8 million on Chicago TV ads since September with a campaign fund bolstered by $4.4 million from outside groups.

The take-no-prisoners contest saw Quinn portrayed as a weak leader with a failed tenure and Brady as too conservative for a moderate state.

The brief hours of downtime come after a dramatic period surrounding the state’s highest office. It was nearly two years ago that FBI agents knocked on Blagojevich’s door around 6 a.m., arresting a sitting governor on blockbuster political corruption charges. By January 2009, Blagojevich had been impeached and removed and Quinn ascended from his low-profile lieutenant governor spot.

The accidental governor promised to clean up the state’s economic crisis as well as what Quinn dubbed its “integrity crisis.”

But much of Quinn’s tenure was marked by indecisive leadership as the state’s money problems grew worse and ethics reform efforts fell short of what experts said was needed to truly begin to clean up state government.

The state now faces what is expected to be a $15 billion deficit by next year. Much of that is $8 billion in IOUs to social service agencies that care for the elderly, disabled and drug addicted.

Quinn took an early political gamble and proposed an income tax increase to help the state get into the black, but he had trouble settling on a specific plan. Lawmakers refused to sign on to a tax hike with an election near, and Quinn’s repeated calls for taxpayers to fork over more became an easy attack point for Brady.

Brady contends the state must “live within its means” and rein in spending instead of raising taxes. Despite his criticism of Quinn’s budget plans, Brady offered few details about his own, saying he would first need to get in office and assess the situation. At first, Brady called for 10 percent across-the-board cuts, but has since built in more flexibility by saying he’ll slash “a dime of every dollar” of overall spending.

Instead of in-depth policy discussions, Quinn and Brady spent much of the year hurling insults at each other.

Quinn called Brady “heartless” for his proposed cuts to education and other areas, and accused the veteran lawmaker of harboring “extreme” views on social issues such as abortion and gay rights. He said Brady had a “secret” plan to raise taxes after the election, pointing to past Republican governors who raised taxes once in office.

Brady repeatedly attempted to link Quinn to Blagojevich, frequently referring to Quinn as Blagojevich’s “partner” who stood by while the ex-governor ran the state into the ground. Brady alleged that Quinn entered into a deal that would “make Blagojevich proud” by cutting an agreement with the state’s largest public employee union to prevent layoffs until 2012 in exchange for promises of millions of dollars in savings in overtime and worker healthcare costs.

Brady also picked up where Comptroller Dan Hynes left off during the Democratic primary, hammering Quinn in television ads over a botcher early prisoner release program that let 1,745 inmates out of prison an average of 36 days early by speeding up the rate at which they earned good time credit.

Quinn fired back in an advertisement meant to appeal to animal lovers last week, pointing to Brady’s introduction of a bill shortly after he won the Republican primary that would allow for mass euthanasia of dogs and cats. Brady has since said pursuing the idea was a mistake. Brady also has tried to calm fears about his conservative social stances on abortion and gay rights by saying they will take a back seat to improving the state’s economy.

Brady argues that Illinois is unfriendly to businesses because of excessive regulation and high worker compensation costs. Brady says the state has lost jobs under Quinn, while Quinn claims Brady has no experience in job creation. Quinn points to Brady’s family home construction business, which has had to lay off workers as it struggles through the recession.

Both candidates turned to their national parties for help in the contentious race. President Barack Obama cut a radio ad for Quinn. Brady made appearances with former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Republican darlings Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour and Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell as he sought to end the Democrats’ one-party rule of Springfield.

Also on the ballot were Libertarian Lex Green and the Green Party’s Rich Whitney, a Carbondale attorney who found himself in a tough fight to maintain the Greens’ designation as an established political party in Illinois.

Whitney won the designation for his party after he garnered more than 10 percent of the vote in 2006, and he was required to get 5 percent of vote this time around to keep the classification. But Whitney’s campaign was plagued with fundraising troubles, and he spent much of the last few months battling to be included in public debates with Quinn and Brady.

Meanwhile, independent candidate Scott Lee Cohen spent millions of his own money to launch a bid for the state’s top post. That’s a quest he started after winning the Democratic lieutenant governor primary earlier this year but dropping out after pressure party leaders embarrassed about unseemly revelations from Cohen’s past.

All 50 aldermen on the Chicago City Council had to file paperwork earlier this year detailing their outside income and gifts. The Tribune took that ethics paperwork and posted the information here for you to see. You can search by ward number or alderman's last name.

The Cook County Assessor's office has put together lists of projected median property tax bills for all suburban towns and city neighborhoods. We've posted them for you to get a look at who's paying more and who's paying less.

Past posts

Clout has a special meaning in Chicago, where it can be a noun, a verb or an adjective. This exercise of political influence in a uniquely Chicago style was chronicled in the Tribune cartoon "Clout Street" in the early 1980s. Clout Street, the blog, offers an inside look at the politics practiced from Chicago's City Hall to the Statehouse in Springfield, through the eyes of the Tribune's political and government reporters.